


Don’t Tell Me About It; Keep On Blowing My Mind

by softanticipation



Category: Women's Soccer RPF
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-27
Updated: 2019-09-27
Packaged: 2020-10-29 00:49:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,108
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20787836
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/softanticipation/pseuds/softanticipation
Summary: Okay, so maybe there’s a reason why Emily keeps averting her eyes from the giant glossy stills that Alex seems intent on wallpapering every surface with. That doesn’t mean that Rose needs to make fun of her for it, and it definitely doesn’t mean that Kelley needs to ask her why she refuses to say anything complimentary about it.Hasn’t anyone else on this team ever heard of self preservation?





	Don’t Tell Me About It; Keep On Blowing My Mind

**Author's Note:**

> title from the song hands by mike perry and sabrina carpenter.
> 
> because really, something like this needed to be written, so i thought i'd take a whack at it.

Emily is running late. But really, when isn’t she?

She looks at her phone and curses low under her breath. Now officially fifteen minutes late, she knows that Lindsey is going to kill her the moment she arrives at lunch. Really, it shouldn’t be her fault that Mal had given her such a hard time about dipping out as soon as they’d gotten to the hotel, but she knows that Lindsey and Rose aren’t going to see it that way. She also knows that she should theoretically have a buddy with her right now, as she daringly dashes into a crosswalk that could be overrun with moving cars at any second, but she hadn’t felt like grabbing anyone else. And really, Emily thinks as she checks the location of the cafe on her phone again to make sure that she’s heading in the right direction, no one else needs to bear witness to what’s about to happen. 

To say that she’s kind of dreading it would be a polite way to phrase it. 

Sixteen minutes after the agreed upon meeting time, Emily crashes into a flimsy metal chair. Rose greets her with a raised eyebrows, sucking at an iced coffee that’s already nearly empty, and she already knows that she’s going to have to buy her another one if she doesn’t want to be crucified at some point in the next couple of days. Without a steady stream of caffeine running through her blood, Rose can be hell on wheels to say the least. Lindsey, on the other hand, has both elbows propped up on the table edge, phone in both her hands, caging in two coffees. 

Emily knows she’s not going to be able to sweet talk her way out of this, but it’s definitely worth a shot considering her other options. It’s been a long day already, what with traveling back from Atlanta and everything, and she knows that she’s not quite up for the conversation she knows Rose has in mind. If she’d been smart, she would have coordinated with Lindsey ahead of time to ensure that they don’t end up talking about the particular topic that Emily is dreading, but a weekend back home has kind of messed with her brain.

Although if she’s being honest, it wasn’t the being home part that messed with her. 

“Thanks for waiting for me!” Emily announces, as though they aren’t already aware of her presence, even if Lindsey is refusing to look at her quite yet - she really does hate when Emily is late, and still hasn’t forgiving her for the Great Brunch Disaster of 2017 (which is fair; Emily probably wouldn’t have forgiven herself for that one either). 

“Nice of you to show up,” Rose says snidely, and Emily falls into the chair next to Lindsey before proceeding to kick her right foot in the direction of Rose’s shins. It’s a weakly aimed kick but it seems to get the job done, judging by the glare Rose sends her. “What? You know you’re late.”

“You know I was just getting in,” Emily says. “Did you guys order for me?”

She tries to sneak in a hand past Lindsey’s makeshift barrier, but Lindsey is too sharp for that. Her hand gets smacked away before she can make contact with either of the coffee cups, and when Lindsey turns to face her with a reproachful glare, Emily feels appropriately admonished. Despite the fact that she knows this isn’t all that she has to face, not even close, she grins as innocently as she can and waits for Lindsey to speak. 

“You’re late,” she says, and it’s accusatory, and Emily isn’t dumb. She knows that this isn’t entirely about her being late - although she’s wise enough to know that that’s probably a pretty large portion of it. No, this is about everything Emily’s been experiencing over the last month or so, everything that’s been particularly amped up over the last couple of days. 

So maybe Lindsey had advised Emily to stay away, and maybe Emily had done the exact opposite of that. It hadn’t mattered that the plans had been in place for a while, ever since they’d won the world cup practically. Things like that rarely mattered to Lindsey, who might have pulled out at a moments notice if she thought it was the best thing for her to do. Lindsey wouldn’t have gotten on that plane the way Emily had, and she definitely hasn’t been approving of Emily’s decisions. Rather the opposite: she’s been giving her a very loud and obvious silent treatment. 

Well, as silent as Lindsey gets with her, anyway. It hasn’t been total radio silence, but she definitely hasn’t initiated any contact since. In fact, every bit of their plans to meet up had been made through a group chat with Rose and Mal, the latter of whom had declined to join under the pretense of needing to catch up on her sleep after their weekend down south. Emily doesn’t care to understand Mal’s reasoning - the only thing she’d cared about upon getting back to the hotel was getting away from it as fast as possible. Aside from being mildly terrified of Lindsey’s wrath after everything that’s gone down so far, she’d learned that Kelley was occupying the adjoining room, and based on past evidence was almost certainly planning on keeping the doors between the suites open at all times. 

Really, Emily thinks as Lindsey continues to stare her down, the others should be taking pity on her. Surely one of them should be able to understand what she’s currently suffering through. 

“Is that a no?” Emily says, looking between the two of them. “Do I need to go inside and get food for myself?”

“I ordered for you,” Lindsey says, clearly unhappy with it all. “But you owe me.”

“I’ll Venmo you,” Emily promises, pulling at the sleeve of Lindsey’s pullover and trying to appeal to her softer side in order to hopefully get her coffee before the ice melts and makes it virtually useless. 

“I don’t care about the money,” Lindsey says sourly. 

“I’ll take the money,” Rose offers. “You can Venmo me.”

Emily wastes no time in immediately flashing her a pair of middle fingers, and Lindsey is quick to use her own hands to push Emily’s down and out of sight.

“Are you mad because I’m late?” Emily asks with a sigh, pushing several strands of hair out of her face, behind her ear. “Because you can blame Mal and Kelley for that. Really, I swear - I had nothing to do with it.”

“No, I’m not mad because you’re late,” Lindsey says irritably. “But you’d think at this point, you’d figure out how to stop being ten to fifteen minutes late for everything.”

“I’m on time for lots of things,” Emily says breezily. “I’m on time for all my flights, aren’t I?”

“It doesn’t count when someone else is forcing you to be on time,” Rose interjects. 

“Can I have my coffee, please?” Emily asks, deciding to ignore Rose who surely can’t have anything helpful to contribute. “Unless those are both for you.”

Lindsey shoots Emily a glare before sliding one of the cups towards her. It’s the one that Lindsey’s been drinking from, and Emily knows she deserves that, but it tastes so heavenly on her tongue that it makes up for it regardless. 

“God, I needed this,” Emily says, and she knows it’s dramatic - she doesn’t need Rose’s snorting laugh to tell her that. “I had to get up so early this morning, you don’t even know.”

“Oh yeah,” Rose says sarcastically. “I’m sure that flying on all those private planes is so stressful for you. I can’t imagine.”

Emily feels like she’s two seconds away from decking her in the face, and clearly Lindsey can feel it too, guessing from the way she leans over to nudge her upper arm against Emily’s. 

“How was being home?” Lindsey asks. “Spend much time with your parents? How are they?”

That’s the thing about Lindsey: as peeved as she gets with Emily, as often as she gets in a mood and fucks off with some of their other friends, it all tends to dissipate rather quickly. Emily knows the drill by now, knows that most of the time she just has to be patient and wait for Lindsey to come around. It seems almost a little too good to be true though, this time around, and Emily isn’t one to let her guard down - especially not around the people who are able to read her the best. 

“Yeah,” Emily says, and she relaxes fully into her seat, legs spread wide and her left arm reaching out to drape over the back of Lindsey’s chair. She knows that Lindsey finds it somewhat irritating, and how long she’ll allow it tends to be a pretty good gauge of how much she’ll let Emily get away with in other areas. “Yeah, my parents are great. They finally painted my old room, how many years later?”

“Oh, so you stayed at home?” Rose asks, earning looks from both Emily and Lindsey. 

“What?” Emily asks, confused. 

At the same time, Lindsey makes an attempt at shrugging off Emily’s arm while sarcastically saying to Rose, “Oh yes, very subtle.”

“You two are so stupid,” Rose tells them, and her cup is almost empty and their food is being brought to their table, but she doesn’t stop talking as Lindsey politely directs the plates to the proper individual. “Sonny, you don’t fuck off back home with Kelley and Mal the way you did and expect us to not ask questions. Or are you just really that stupid?”

“Stop calling me stupid,” Emily tells her. “Okay, did you mean to order this for me? Because you know how I feel about fruit at lunchtime.”

Lindsey casts a brief glance at the apples in Emily’s salad and just blinks. 

“Oh,” she says flatly. “My mistake.”

It’s her own petty way of being passive aggressive, and Emily just rolls her eyes before beginning to transfer all of the apple slices out of her bowl and onto a napkin. 

“Stop calling her stupid,” Lindsey says to Rose. “Only I’m allowed to do that.”

“You know, I don’t remember giving you permission for that,” Emily tries to say.

“She’s right, you know,” Lindsey says, nodding at Rose as she digs into her bowl. “If you really thought we weren’t going to say anything or ask anything - “

Emily just shakes her head and exhales heavily because this is exactly what she thought they would do. 

“I can’t help that home for her is in the vicinity of what is home for me,” she says as casually as she can manage - because really, why should geography be a factor here? 

“Oh, that’s rich,” Lindsey says, shaking her head at her food with a humorless chuckle. “Really, really rich.”

“I stayed at home,” Emily says, rolling her eyes and chucking an apple bit at Lindsey’s head. “Feel free to text my mom to confirm.”

“Maybe I already did,” Lindsey says with more snark than Emily would have expected from her, and she goes quiet for a long pause while they all focus on eating. 

“Look, we get it,” Rose says once they’re all mostly finished, spreading her arms wide, as though she’s suddenly become all-knowing and extremely wise. “I’d probably be sucking up to her too if I thought I’d get to see those pictures early. Making us all wait like a bunch of plebians? Very Kelley, but also very annoying.”

Emily’s mouth goes dry and she looks over at Lindsey who just raises an eyebrow at her. 

“What?” she asks, thoroughly confused as her heart beats frantically inside of her chest. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“The body issue?” Rose says, as though it should be obvious. “Come on, I’m sure she’s seen the finished product. Could you really not get her to show you any of it? I thought out of everyone, you’d be able to.”

Emily feels her blood pressure slowly begin to return to baseline. 

“I’ll see it when everyone else does,” she says, her tongue feeling too big for her mouth as she stabs some lettuce with her fork. “I’m not in a rush or anything.”

“Why not?” Rose persists, and Lindsey just bumps against Emily again in a way that seems vaguely reassuring, but Emily can’t be too sure yet. “She probably looks really good. Did she like, swear you to secrecy or something? There’s no way she didn’t show you and Mal.”

There’s a vivid flashback to a starry sky, slightly stiff overalls, and itchy grass under Emily’s palms. She’d had plenty of moments alone with Kelley all day - Mal had been entirely too busy with her boyfriend, which really, Emily should have seen coming - but suddenly things between them seemed too quiet for the first time since she’d woken up that morning. 

“Surprised you haven’t asked me about the shoot yet,” Kelley had said, tipping her head back to look upwards. She’d just finished posting a little video of them to her Instagram story, something that had made Emily’s stomach jump into her throat (and not just because of the thought of what Lindsey would have to say about it), and Emily cleared her throat before answering. 

“What’s there to ask?” she’d said as uncaringly as she could manage. 

“You know,” Kelley had said, right hand reaching out to her side, seemingly to adjust her balance, and stopping just short of Emily’s spread fingers. “Was it weird, did I ask Christen for pointers, did I have fun? That kind of stuff.”

Emily had felt saliva pooling in the back of her throat, rendering her incapable of saying anything without sounding like a fool. Instead, she’d merely shaken her head. 

“Well,” Kelley had said, drawing her arms closer to her, rubbing her palms on the denim covering her upper thighs before messing with her hair. “Well.”

“I haven’t thought too much about it,” Emily had blatantly lied once she’d managed to swallow thickly. “Did you want to tell me about it?”

Kelley had finished tying her hair up in a bun before replying. 

“No,” she’d said, the word drawn out most peculiarly. “Just surprised you haven’t asked.”

Emily hadn’t asked why Kelley had been surprised by that (after all, there was no reason for Emily to be asking her anything about the shoot), and despite the fact that she partially regrets not doing so, she thinks that maybe she’s better off not knowing. 

It isn’t until Lindsey gets up, chair legs scraping on the concrete, that Emily is brought back to the present. 

“Come on,” she says, nodding at Rose who is already impatiently waiting for them to get going. “Rose says she wants to check out this boutique before we have to head back.”

Emily walks next to Lindsey, a few steps behind Rose who is engrossed in something on her phone. 

“You didn’t say anything.”

It’s a question and a statement wrapped into one, and Lindsey seems to understand perfectly as she shakes her head in response. 

“I wouldn’t,” she reassures Emily. “You know I wouldn’t.”

“No, I know,” Emily says. And really, she hadn’t doubted Lindsey for more than a split second, but even that is probably just the paranoia getting the best of her. There’s not much for Emily to be scared of, but this particular secret is one that she plans on taking to the grave with her. Having Rose know - Rose, who is quite possibly one of the biggest gossips on the team, who always gets away with it because she looks and acts so unassumingly - would be a worst case scenario, and Emily knows that Lindsey knows that. “Just, with how she was talking. Have I been obvious?”

“No,” Lindsey says definitively. “I mean, everyone is looking at Kelley a little more closely than usual. Which is saying something, but it also makes sense.”

“Right,” Emily says, feeling marginally less panicked about it. “I haven’t been any different than usual.”

“No, you haven’t,” Lindsey confirms. “Besides, once it comes out and everyone can stop freaking out about it, it will be fine. Rose can finally shut her big mouth.”

“Right,” Emily says. “I just have to wait for Wednesday, and then this will all pass.”

“Right,” Lindsey says, and Emily things that that’s going to be the end of it, but then - “You’re like, okay, aren’t you?”

Lindsey sounds more concerned than Emily thinks she deserves, but she isn’t about to protest it. 

“Yeah,” Emily says. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

“Just checking,” Lindsey says. “You’d tell me if you weren’t, wouldn’t you?”

“I’ll come get you if I need you,” Emily tells her, bumping up against her. She misjudges how hard she moves and nearly ends up knocking Lindsey off the sidewalk. “Sound good?”

Lindsey regains her footing and shoots Emily a glare that disappears nearly instantly. 

“Yeah, sure,” she says. “Sounds good.”

Emily isn’t sure that Lindsey believes her, but at the moment, she can’t be bothered to care very much. 

*

The next morning, when Emily wakes up, it’s to the incessant vibrating of her phone against the hotel nightstand. 

“What is that?” Abby asks sleepily from beneath the covers in the other bed. 

“Probably Rose or Mal being annoying,” Emily says, her mind still fuzzy. “I’ll make it stop.”

Abby doesn’t say anything else, presumably fast asleep again, and Emily fumbles with her phone to try and put whoever it is on silent, but the influx of messages grab her attention and force her wide awake. It is, indeed, both Rose and Mal, sending dozens of emojis and exclamation points to the group chat, and Emily feels a sense of dread creep over her as she scrolls up through the messages to see a few screenshots before arriving at a linked video. 

Fucking Good Morning America. 

She can’t go back to sleep, but it isn’t long before she should be getting up anyway. She’s too busy trying to figure out if she should watch the video, eventually deciding that the screenshots are enough. It’s Kelley, of  _ course  _ it’s Kelley, naked and standing tall with a  _ fucking  _ beer, and Emily feels like she’s moments away from losing her mind. 

Because her neck feels hot, a flush creeping up her cheeks and down her chest, and she wishes she could stop herself from having such a visceral reaction every time she’s confronted with the reality of Kelley participating in all of this because it’s getting quite out of hand. As much as she wants to be cool about it, and as much as she knows she shouldn’t let it affect her this much, her body seems determined to betray her mind, which knows beyond a shadow of a doubt that this isn’t a big deal. 

It’s really not a big deal, Emily tells herself, forcing herself to exit the chat without saying anything. Mal and Rose have shut up for the time being, and she almost misses the distraction she knows that their commentary would provide her - instead she’s unable to think of anything else. It doesn’t seem to matter that Emily’s seen glimpses of a naked Kelley over the years; her body seems to believe that this is all very new and exciting, and refuses to back down. 

She rolls onto her front, pushing her pillow away and pressing her face into the mattress. It forces her to focus on her breathing, on the foreign sheets beneath her, on the fact that she’s not in her own bed back in Portland. No matter how badly she wants to, she can’t react the way she had back when Kelley had told her what she was doing. She definitely can’t lose her composure like that again, and not least of all because Abby is in the next bed over. 

Emily has to pull herself together, because she’s got an immense amount of love for Kelley that runs tender and warm at the best of times, frustrated and indifferent at the worst of times, but never ever fades. And really, that’s more important than any wide expanse of tanned and freckled skin, isn’t it?

So she pulls herself together, up and out of bed to the bathroom where she brushes her teeth for more thoroughly than necessary, so much so that her mouthwash makes her gums burn. The sensation distracts from everything else that she’s feeling - everything that she wishes she wasn’t feeling - so that when she gets in the shower, she’s able to think about something other than touching herself to the suddenly very real images of one of her best friends. 

That had only happened once, and she’ll be damned if she ever lets it happen again. 

*

Emily feels bad about being late to meet Lindsey the day before - she really, truly does. In a bid to make up for it, she makes sure to slip downstairs exceedingly early before they have to leave for open practice. It’s been a weird day - she’d spent a decent amount of time out with Sam and Rose, the latter of whom had been incredibly annoying about Kelley’s body issue preview. 

“Alex says she’s having her assistant bring in a bunch of copies,” Rose had said through a mouthful of breakfast. 

“Why would she do that?” Emily had asked, privately praying for the exact opposite scenario. If she never has to see another picture from this shoot in her lifetime, she’ll be perfectly fine. More than fine, in fact. 

“To be supportive,” Sam had said. “Don’t you want to be supportive?”

There are already a few people down already, milling about the area. Carli is on her phone in the corner, JJ and Crystal are trying to figure out how to change the tv channel, and Tobin and Christen have wandered in from whatever excursion they were on, in their own little world as uusal. Emily frowns at her phone, wondering where Lindsey is, and doesn’t even notice that someone else has entered the room until they’ve thrown their body down next to her, pressed up against her left side. 

“Looking for me?”

It’s Kelley - Emily knows before she even opens her mouth and speaks. She’d know those way her thighs feel flush against hers anywhere, would be able to identify the way she smells with one nostril taped shut. It’s what happens when two people spend so much time together, and Emily does her best to think nothing of it as she locks her phone and turns to blink slowly at Kelley’s wolfishly-grinning face. 

“No,” she deadpans. “Why would I ever be looking for you?”

Kelley pouts but it’s just for a moment, because she’s too busy crowding Emily’s space to be truly bothered by anything. Emily wonders if Kelley is aware that there’s an entire half of the long couch that is entirely unoccupied, but doesn’t shove her off. There isn’t anywhere for Emily to move, not unless she wants to become one with the arm of the couch, so she just lets it be. 

“Because,” Kelley says, wiggling her eyebrows, practically leering at Emily’s face. “Did you see the photos?”

“What photos?” Emily says, and she knows she can play clueless well when she wants to, but Kelley’s unfortunately unusually good at seeing through it when she does. 

“My photos,” Kelley says. “Come on, are you really going to act like you haven’t seen them?”

“You’re going to have to be a little more specific,” Emily tells her, and she hates how natural, how  _ automatic _ it is for them to angle their bodies towards each other. She turns towards Kelley, elbow propped up on the couch arm so she can rest her head on her hand. “You’ve got many pictures of yourself out there in the world, I’m sure.”

Kelley huffs, bouncing in her seat just a little bit with restrained impatience. Emily loves riling her up like this, refusing to give her what she wants until Kelley is forced to show her hand. As it is, Kelley presses her palm into Emily’s left thigh, digging the heel in just enough that if she did so any harder, it would begin to hurt. 

“You know what I’m talking about,” Kelley says, and underneath the annoyance in her tone, Emily can detect a hint of neediness. It’s not hard to figure out that there’s some part of Kelley - a very small part, but part of her nonetheless - that craves Emily’s acceptance, but that doesn’t exactly come easy. She’s not sure why Kelley needs it, as there’s got to be dozens of people, if not hundreds or thousands, telling her how good she looks without her clothes on, but she is sure that this is one time she definitely won’t be giving in to Kelley’s needy whims. 

“You’re really going to have to elaborate on the subject,” Emily tells her, and she never realizes how much she talks with her hands until Kelley inevitably grabs them, forcing the two of them to lock eyes and focus on what they’re saying to each other. She does that now, and it pains Emily to look at her like this, all of her pre-shower thoughts coming back to her as she’s confronted with the reality of exactly how many freckles are splashed across Kelley’s nose and cheeks. 

“The body issue,” Kelley clarifies. “Everyone else has told me what they think about it, except for you.”

Emily tries to wiggle her fingers out of Kelley’s grasp, but her grip is too tight. 

“What do you want me to think about it?” Emily asks, turning the question back on Kelley, because she’s got no idea what she should be thinking about it. 

Because here’s the deeper, multifaceted truth of it all: outside of whatever attraction Emily might be feeling towards Kelley because of this whole thing (something that she’s been desperately trying to chalk up to how long it’s been since she’s really been with somebody in a way that left her feeling genuinely fulfilled), there’s the complicated protectiveness that she’s been experiencing ever since Kelley’s birthday. 

Kelley had been casual and subtly proud about it. She hadn’t been worried about it, Emily had been able to tell that much, but there had been the same neediness that Kelley is displaying now. For one reason or another, she’d been hoping for Emily’s approval, and on that particular occasion, under those certain circumstances - slightly sun drunk, sinuses burning with the smell of salt, deliriously blissed out with how perfect the day was turning out - it had been handed to her on a golden platter. It was uncharacteristic, how Emily hadn’t thought longer than a few seconds about it, because the idea of it was so abstract at the moment and the reality of it wouldn’t hit her for hours. It wouldn’t hit her until after she’d made her way back to Portland with a moody Lindsey, enduring a flight full of stilted conversation about her best friend’s own issues. 

It didn’t hit her until she was sprawled out in bed, boneless and coming down mindlessly and removing her hand from between her own legs, that she realized what was going on. 

Her insides had suddenly started churning and she’d felt sick, sitting up abruptly and steadying herself. She wasn’t one to normally be so unaware, but it had been a long day and she’d been too busy to give it much thought. She’d been too distracted to realize that underneath the practicalities of it - Kelley springing it on her last minute, tossing out the suggestion that she come along in a manner that made it difficult to determine whether it was a joke or not, Emily needing to get on a flight regardless of the seriousness of the request - she was nearly burning up with a kind of possessiveness she’d never experienced before. 

There’s no way in which Kelley actually belongs to Emily. No way at all, no manner in which Emily can lay any kind of claim to her. They’re close friends, best friends on most occasions, and might spend entirely too much time in each other’s pockets when physically able to, but that doesn’t give Emily an excuse to be feeling this way about it. It’s just a couple of tasteful photos (she’s seen previous editions of the body issue and knows what to expect), and yet she can’t stop thinking about how severely uncomfortable it makes her to think about all the other people who are going to get to see Kelley like that: all bare and laid out for whoever cares enough to look. 

She’d mentioned it to Lindsey, who didn’t get it at all. Once she’d suggested that Emily was jealous (she’d adamantly insisted that she wasn’t - what was there to be jealous of? Kelley wasn’t Emily’s to be jealous over), the subject had become nearly forbidden. 

“You have a crush,” Lindsey had said as if it was as simple as one plus one equals two. “You’ll get over it. It’s not a big deal.”

Except it was a big deal, because Kelley was her best friend, and Emily didn’t generally make a habit of touching herself with the knowledge that the subject of her fantasies was currently just as undressed as she was. Emily didn’t want a crush, and she’d told Lindsey that flat out. 

“So then get over it like a normal person,” Lindsey had said, as though she was a paragon of healthy relationships. “Keep your distance, and, if you’re feeling particularly ambitious, find someone else to get off to.”

Emily had promptly hit her over the head and immediately regretted ever telling her anything. 

So Emily doesn’t know what to think about it, not when Kelley hasn’t elaborated much on the subject, and not when she’s internally struggling with about ten different things regarding it all. 

Thankfully, Kelley shrugs her shoulders and answers in a way that is actually helpful for once. 

“Well, you could tell me that I don’t look like a troll, for one,” Kelley tells her, and she’s still holding Emily’s hands, but for some reason, it’s now bearable. 

“Who says I’ve even seen it?” Emily asks. 

“Do you live under a rock?” Kelley asks. “No, don’t answer that. Have you really not?”

“Nah, Rose was spreading it around earlier,” Emily says, because it’s less embarrassing in the long run to not pretend. She can’t avoid it completely, as much as she kind of wants to. “You don’t look like a troll, though. Happy?”

Kelley doesn’t exactly look happy, but she releases her grip just as Lindsey comes up to them, clearing her throat most exaggeratedly. 

“Um,” she says, looking between them. “Am I interrupting?”

“Yes,” Kelley says at the same moment Emily says, “No.”

“Right,” Lindsey says, eyes narrowing slightly. “Okay.”

“Move,” Emily tells Kelley, who looks like she wants to resist but then gets up reluctantly. 

“Fine,” she says, straightening out her training jacket. “But only because I think Alex just got in a box full of the issue, and I want to look at it with her. Make sure to explain those tattoos.”

She bounces away and Emily feels frozen in her seat as Lindsey takes her place. 

“She’s joking, right?” Lindsey says, watching Emily watch Kelley until she disappears out of the room. “She doesn’t have any tattoos.”

Emily wrenches her eyes away from the hallway at the far end of the room, meeting Lindsey’s skeptical gaze. 

“Am I supposed to know that more than anyone else would?” she says, suddenly exhausted. 

Lindsey just hums, slumping into the couch cushions. 

“No,” she reasons, “I suppose not.”

*

It gets worse after open practice. 

Emily spends most of her time avoiding Rose and Kelley: Rose because she doesn’t feel like being antagonized, and Kelley because, well, it seems rather obvious to her even if her mind isn’t having the easiest time putting it into words. She spends two minutes being envious of Alex and Pinoe, who spend the entire time either chatting on the bench or signing for fans, but then welcomes the ache in her legs and the feeling of sweat drying behind her knees and on the back of her neck. It’s not that Emily seeks out distractions, as she feels that’s rather cowardly, but she isn’t about to give her mind enough space to linger on the subject that everyone else is fixated upon. 

So yeah, Kelley’s naked on the cover of a magazine. Big fucking deal. 

Big  _ fucking  _ deal. 

It’s a mantra that she repeats to herself as she knocks the ball back and forth with Tobin, who doesn’t blink an eye while everyone else won’t shut up about it. It’s almost like Tobin is completely oblivious to the fact that Kelley has even done the shoot in the first place (which is very possible, honestly), and that’s precisely what Emily needs right now. She needs someone who doesn’t care about it, someone who doesn’t care how she feels about it. Lindsey had seemed safe, but then on the bus ride to the stadium she too had started loudly talking with Moe about it, and Emily had been forced to shove her Airpods in and tune the entire thing out. 

She eyes Lindsey critically. She’s ten or so yards away with Moe and Mal, any pretense of practicing completely abandoned in favor of gossip. This is how Emily knows it’s gotten bad, because Lindsey isn’t normally one to gossip just for the hell of it, and there’s a part of her that’s worried about Lindsey accidentally revealing how Emily feels about it all. Ultimately though, she decides as she refocuses her attention after Tobin sends the ball flying right between her legs, she trusts Lindsey well enough to push those kind of thoughts out of her mind until she’s given a reason to worry about them. 

“Hey,” Tobin says, after being on the receiving end of a string of particularly poor passes. “So you’re starting again tomorrow.”

“Yeah,” Emily says, and she resists the urge to look for Kelley who is the primary reason she’ll be able to start another game. “So are you.”

“Probably,” Tobin says, and it’s so nonchalant that Emily wishes she could channel this specific bit of Tobin’s attitude whenever she wanted, at those moments when keeping her cool takes every bit of concentration she can muster up. “You ready?”

Tobin has never been particularly loquacious, so Emily doesn’t feel like she has to do more than nod in return. Which is a good thing, really, because across the field she can see Kelley and Allie poring over something that looks suspiciously magazine-like, and the intense panic that comes over her body makes her completely miss Tobin’s next pass. The ball sails past her, and when she doesn’t immediately jog away to retrieve it, Tobin goes to get it herself. 

“You’re fine,” Tobin says when she walks back up, the ball dancing between her feet in a way that no one else can ever replicate. It’s short but not harsh - in fact, it’s somewhat comforting, and Emily just nods again before Christen comes up to steal Tobin away. 

There’s a huddle about tomorrow’s line up at the end of practice, and Emily feels like she can finally take a breath as a few of those who are ruled out due to injury head back to the locker room early. With Kelley gone, Emily can drink from the water bottle handed to her and actually pay attention as the coaches talk and answer questions. She doesn’t forget about everything else, but forces it to quiet enough so she can focus on the upcoming game. 

Because really, isn’t that much more important than some dumb photographs?

One would think so - one being Emily - until everyone heads back to the locker room to find that Alex and Kelley have done their absolute worst. It’s a disaster scene, and Emily feels a strange, strong urge to burst into tears. Not the sad kind, or the frustrated kind, and not even the angry kind. No, it’s more of a  _ why does this keep happening to me  _ kind of emotion that overcomes her, and she rubs at her eyes with her fingertips to make sure that her vision isn’t playing tricks on her, and that she’s definitely not having a paranoid delusion. 

All over the place is Kelley’s naked ass. 

She’s not sure if it’s ironic, or comical, or cruel, that as soon as she’s decided that she can successfully push this entire situation to the back of her mind long enough to feel like she can function like a normal human being and not one that is overly fixated on the circumstances surrounding her teammate’s extracurricular activities, Alex decides that instead of handing out the print copies like a normal person, she’s going to paper them all over the locker room.

It’s chaos to say the least. To be fair, chaos is a relatively common state of being for the team, and it’s not as though anything is particularly out of hand, but everyone is yelling and Alex is proudly waving her hands around in a very Vanna White kind of fashion. Emily gets it, she’s proud of Kelley, she’s being a good friend, but this seems excessive. She can’t figure out how Alex did it, if her rumored assistant really does exist and had gotten her a roll of tape and several stacks of magazines two days before they’re supposed to hit the stands, but the pages appear to have been ripped out and stuck to the walls one way or another. 

“Oh my God,” Lindsey says, bumping into Emily who has stopped moving, still rubbing at her eyes and trying to figure out how to get to her locker without inevitably being confronted by her worst nightmare. “What happened in here?”

“Alex,” Rose answers, facing the two of them, Sam at her elbow in an instant. “She asked me to buy her some time.”

“No wonder you kept asking Jill so many questions,” Sam says. 

“Yeah, I was wondering if you were having an aneurysm and couldn’t remember that you’re not actually medically cleared yet,” Lindsey says, and she narrowly avoids the pinch Rose attempts to land on her forearm. 

“Why?” Emily asks, discovering that she can safely look at Rose without the possibility of being bombarded by picture after picture of Kelley in her birthday suit. “Why would you support this?”

“Because it’s funny!” Rose exclaims, gesturing to the room before them. “Come on, and like Sam said earlier, we have to be supportive!”

“You’ll just do anything Alex asks you to,” Lindsey says, and she bends down to pick something off the floor. Emily cringes when she realizes what it is - the cover of the issue, one of the pictures that she’s already seen thanks to the group chat, but it hasn’t gotten any easier for her to look at it. “This is a lot. Isn’t this kind of wasteful?”

“No,” Rose says, rolling her eyes and sticking a hand on her hip. “Honestly, this is funny. You guys should be laughing.”

“I’m laughing,” Sam offers, but then Abby is calling her away to look at something - sure enough, she’s got a shiny piece of paper in her hand - and Emily points a finger at Rose who, to her disappointment, doesn’t even flinch. 

“I’m going to kill you,” she says, and she expects Rose to panic a bit - jump back a step,get that look in her eyes like she knows she’s got it coming to her - but she doesn’t. Instead she just smiles mischievously, and Emily hates it. 

“Go right ahead,” she says, gesturing around the room again. “I did this for you, you know. You should be thanking me.”

“Why would you have done this for me?” Emily asks, looking over at Lindsey who just shrugs, apparently no wiser to what Rose is talking about than Emily. 

“Just getting a little payback,” Rose says breezily, looking far too full of herself. 

“For what?” Emily asks, and she loves Rose like a sister, but she’s punched her own sister before and she’ll do the same to Rose with minimal hesitation. 

“For that little stunt you pulled at the parade,” Rose says. “That was kind of embarrassing, you know. Holding up that sign like you did. I’m going to wash my face - enjoy the scenery!”

She waves obnoxiously before skipping off, and Emily turns to Lindsey who is wearing a bit of a conflicted look on her face. 

“She’s insane,” Emily says disbelievingly. “Like, clinically insane. That was months ago!”

“She’s got her own weird agenda,” Lindsey says, looking at Emily as if she thinks that  _ she  _ is the one who is clinically insane. “Are you okay?”

“No,” Emily says truthfully, reaching for her bun. As often as she’ll dodge questions that she doesn’t want to answer, and as frequently as she’ll respond to a question with one of her own, she doesn’t like being dishonest. As she adjusts her hair so it no longer feels in danger of flopping right off the top of her head, she can see the wheels turning in Lindsey’s head. 

“If you’re still feeling like - “

“I’m fine,” Emily says, cutting her off because they’re in a locker room full of people including Kelley, and as much as she truly does trust Lindsey to not go blabbing her secrets all over the place, she still doesn’t want to chance being overheard. “I’m not okay, but I’m fine. I’ll be fine. I’m just - I’m doing what you suggested I do. I’m keeping my distance. I couldn’t with the trip and everything, I wasn’t going to be an asshole and back out of it, but I’m doing it now.”

Lindsey looks at her skeptically but doesn’t get a chance to say anything in response as Kelley just about pounces on them, brandishing a magazine in both hands. 

“Here we go,” she says, forcing one into Lindsey’s hands. “I convinced Alex to not take them all apart. It wasn’t easy, but I did it.”

“What are we supposed to do with these?” Lindsey asks, staring at the front cover so that Emily only sees the advertisement on the back. 

“Look at them,” Kelley says, and Emily is refusing to take the one that’s being shoved at her, instead looking at Lindsey and praying for the ground to open up and swallow her whole. She can feel her neck getting hot again, and the last thing she wants is for Kelley to see her looking like a tomato. “I’m still waiting for your thoughts, Sonnett.”

“Why hers?” Lindsey asks with raised eyebrows. “Don’t you want my thoughts?”

“I want hers because I value her opinion,” Kelley says plainly. “Especially when it comes to naked women. Keep up, Horan.”

Lindsey just shoots Emily a look that plainly says  _ good luck,  _ and Emily heaves a giant sigh before taking the magazine from Kelley and immediately folding it in half, the index finger of her right hand slotting between the spine and the open ends as they come together. 

“You’re really fishing, aren’t you?” she says to Kelley, keeping her eyes on the floor as she goes for her locker, determined to shove the magazine deep within the depths of her bag, never to be seen again. 

“You never compliment me,” Kelley says, and Emily can hear the whine in her voice, and wonders why Kelley is still seeking some kind of validation from her. She’s persistent, but not usually to this extent. “Can you blame me for wanting to know what you really think? I’m serious when I say that I value your opinion.”

Emily doesn’t look at Kelley until she’s stuffed the copy away, and even then, her eyes travel straight to Kelley’s without making a single pit-stop on the way. Averting her eyes completely is unrealistic, but at least she hasn’t managed to see more than dark backgrounds and blue skies and pale grassy hillsides. Looking at Kelley this closely isn’t preferable, especially when she’s feeling vulnerable, but it’s her best option at the moment, which is seriously saying something. 

She takes a moment to curse Alex to hell and back. 

“You look great,” she says, mustering up the biggest smile she can, shooting Kelley a double thumbs up that feels meaningless. Kelley doesn’t know that, though. “Honestly, Kell, real proud of you for doing this. Good for you.”

She’s not sure if it’s what Kelley’s been looking for, but it’s really the best she can do without torturing herself further and looking at every single picture currently floating around the locker room. Kelley looks pleased enough, though, so Emily tries not to overthink it. 

“Let’s hang out tonight,” Kelley says, touching Emily’s wrist. Her fingers feel warm and surprisingly gentle, considering how aggressive she normally is when it comes to physical contact. “Come on, you’ve been avoiding me.”

“We literally just went to Atlanta together,” Emily reminds her. “How can I possibly be avoiding you?”

“Well for one, you wouldn’t come spend time with me at my apartment,” Kelley says. 

“I was spending time with my parents,” Emily says, refusing to concede this point. “I see you more often than I see them.”

“Well, I’ve barely seen you since we got back,” Kelley maintains stubbornly. “And on the flight here, you wouldn’t even sit next to me.”

Emily decides not to mention that that should hardly have made a difference, considering the small size of the plane. 

“So, tonight,” Kelley says, wrapping her fingers more fully around Emily’s wrist, and with them staring into each others eyes, Emily can’t help but feel a little funny about it all. Funny in that she can feel a funny motion behind her navel, funny in that she doesn’t think she should be feeling this way right now, and funny in that she knows there’s no way she can proceed normally from this moment on. 

Because really, she thought this was all mostly due to the thought of Kelley being naked, but Kelley is fully clothed and right in front of her and only talking about casually hanging out together, and she’s still feeling that way about it. She hadn’t bargained on realizing that she finds Kelley more than simply objectively attractive, and she’s not sure whether or not it’s something that she can make go away or not. The only thing Emily is sure of is that this feels like some kind of fresh hell in which her hormones are positively torturing her, and she doesn’t know how she’s going to deal with it quite yet. 

“What about tonight?” Emily gets out, finding it hard to follow along with the conversation when her mind is running a million miles an hour. 

“We’ll do something fun,” Kelley says with a shrug. “Maybe dinner, or just hang out in one of our rooms. We’ll figure it out later.”

Emily just nods because really, what else is she supposed to do? She definitely can’t tell Kelley that it’s taking all of her self control to keep her thoughts from wandering into explicit territory, and she can’t make her brain shut off as successfully as she’d like to - at least not on this short of notice, when she feels like she’s being bombarded with all these new revelations. 

No, Emily can’t do either of those things. 

So she does the only thing she can think of. 

*

“I see you’ve come to me. Like you said you would if you needed me.”

Okay, so maybe she’s being a bit childish about this. Emily would like to think that the fact that she recognizes that means that she’s also being at least somewhat mature, even if Lindsey seems to disagree. 

“Are you hiding from her?” Lindsey asks, swiping Emily’s phone and reading the incoming message before Emily gets a chance to respond. “Are you actually hiding from her? You, of all people, are - “

“I’m leaving,” Emily grumbles, stealing her phone back and halfheartedly kicking at Lindsey in the process. “Forget whatever I said. I don’t need this.”

“What are you going to text back?” Lindsey asks, ignoring what Emily just said. To be fair, Emily has yet to budge an inch, the two of them leaning shoulder to shoulder against the headboard of Lindsey’s bed and waiting for the others to come back with snacks. “Are you going to lie, or tell her the truth?”

“And how would you know what the truth is?” Emily asks smartly, but regrets it as soon as she closes her mouth.

“I know that the truth is that you’re hiding from her,” Lindsey says much too confidently for Emily’s liking. “And I know that because I know you, and I know what you’ve been thinking, and that if you weren’t beating yourself up over being attracted to her, there’s no way you’d be hiding from her.”

“I’m not hiding,” Emily said, because really, she’s not. At least, she doesn’t want to be. “I’ll see her when I see her.”

“You’re pathetic,” Lindsey tells her. “Seriously. What are you going to tell her?”

Emily stomach rolls with guilt and shame and she can’t bear the thought of Kelley waiting for her, of Kelley waiting for a text back, of Kelley waiting to make plans for the two of them (perhaps it had been silly of her to assume that Kelley’s earlier words had meant that they’d be hanging out with a group, but her text has made it abundantly clear that isn’t her intent). She wants to know that this shouldn’t be a big deal, that she should be able to play this off while masquerading as someone who blows Kelley off on a regular basis, but anyone who knows the two of them knows that that’s just not how it works. Both Kelley and Emily know that that’s not how it works: they never blow each other off. 

What makes this so difficult, Emily thinks, is that Kelley is actually a great friend. It would be entirely different if she wasn’t and Emily didn’t need to have a conscience about this, but Kelley is fiercely loyal and protective and kind to those she cares about, and that makes this so hard. Because not only does Emily have to feel horrible about being attracted to her, but she also has to feel horrible about the way that she’s dealing with it. 

“I dunno,” Emily says and Lindsey must sense the shift in her demeanor because she reaches over to pat her thigh comfortingly. “Talk to her about it tomorrow, or whatever. Say something about not feeling well.”

“That’s fine,” Lindsey says, and the fact that she’s not giving her a hard time about it anymore really solidifies how shitty Emily must be at hiding how she feels. “But can I just ask you something? Before Rose gets back?”

“Where the hell did she go to get snacks?” Emily wonders, and they both let out a short burst of laughter before Lindsey’s face turns solemn. 

“Why can’t you just get past it?” Lindsey asks, shaking Emily’s knee with her expansive palm. “Why does it have to be so major for you? Like yeah, she’s attractive, but so what?”

Emily sighs, because it’s a fair question, and one that she’s been asking herself for the last month or so, as her feelings have continued to increase. 

“Because it’s not just like, finding her attractive,” she does her best to explain in a way that Lindsey will hopefully understand. “It’s being attracted to her.”

Lindsey’s expression tells Emily that she definitely isn’t understanding. 

“Okay, so look,” Emily says, shifting back in the bed so she can sit up straighter. Lindsey mirrors her, and rather than laying back in bed and having a throwaway conversation anymore, it all feels very analytical all of a sudden - like more of a discussion than simply Lindsey poking fun at Emily for acting like a child in the face of some very adult issues. “You know how like, puppies are really cute, but - “

“Are you really comparing sexual attraction to puppies?” Lindsey cuts in, and Emily groans. 

“You didn’t even let me finish,” she says, but Lindsey is shaking her head. 

“No,” she says. “No puppies.”

“Fine,” Emily says, pushing her hair behind her ear and thinking hard. “Fine, okay. So maybe like. Alex. You know Alex?”

“No,” Lindsey says, and Emily whacks her across her upper arm. “No, I have no idea who you’re talking about.”

“Shut up,” Emily tells her. “Okay, so you know Alex? And you know how like, she’s obviously hot?”

“Smoking,” Lindsey says, and Emily really doesn’t understand why all her supposed friends have to be so rude towards her (minus Kelley, but that’s not a thought she feels like processing right now). 

“Right,” Emily says, going along with it because it’s easier than fighting Lindsey right now. “So Alex is hot, and we’re all aware of that, but we aren’t necessarily attracted to her. Like she doesn’t do anything for me, you know?”

“Sure,” Lindsey says, rolling her eyes and reaching for her phone, clearly losing patience with Emily’s poor explanation. “I mean, Alex isn’t gay, so I don’t really think you need to worry about being into her in the first place, but - “

“Do you get the difference?” Emily says urgently, because this is a big distinction for her. “Between finding someone attractive, and being attracted to them?”

Lindsey pauses in the middle of composing a text, mouth pursed as she thinks about it. 

“I think so,” Lindsey says in that slow way of hers. “Yeah, I think I get it. Are you trying to tell me that you’re attracted to Kelley? Because I could have told you that.”

Emily forces herself to exhale in a controlled manner so she doesn’t end up murdering Lindsey before Rose and Mal come back with whatever takes close to half an hour to scrounge up out of a vending machine. 

“I can’t be attracted to her,” Emily stresses. “She’s one of my best friends.”

“I thought I was your best friend,” Lindsey interrupts. 

“You can’t be attracted to your best friends,” Emily says. “It just doesn’t work.”

“But why not?” Lindsey says. “I mean, if you’re telling me it’s just physical, then what’s the problem?”

“Because I care about her too!” Emily exclaims. “Come on, don’t make me spell it out for you.”

“Sonny,” Lindsey says, fixing her with a serious look. “We talked about this being a crush. Do you think you have a serious crush on her?”

Emily flounders. 

“I - I - no. I mean, maybe a little bit. Maybe. I don’t know.”

“Sonny,” Lindsey says warningly, and Emily exhales again. 

“Yeah,” she says, resigned to her fate now. “Yeah, maybe.”

Except that they both know that maybe really is code for  _ yes, I’ve got a big fat crush on one of my closest friends and I’m terrified to look at her artfully displayed naked body in case I spontaneously combust.  _

Except Lindsey is a real one and doesn’t make her say that. What she does say, is:

“I want pizza,” she muses, going back to her phone. “Do you want pizza?”

“Fuck, yeah,” Emily nearly groans. “Yeah, I’d sell your legs for a pizza right now.”

Lindsey shoots her a dirty look as her fingers fly across the screen. 

“Go ahead, rub it in,” she tells her. “You can score right now and I can’t.”

Emily just grins at her, and if Lindsey threatens to tell Rose about her not-so-little crush, well - Emily knows she doesn’t mean it.

*

Kelley asks Emily to meet her for breakfast. Emily doesn’t respond. 

Kelley knocks on the adjoining doors between their rooms. Emily doesn’t answer.

Kelley asks Emily to meet for lunch. Emily doesn’t respond. 

Kelley knocks on her front hotel room door. Emily doesn’t answer. 

She feels horrible, she really does, but mostly she’s just glad that Abby isn’t in to ask why Emily isn’t answering the door - or worse, to answer the door for her. She’d ended up staying up way too late with Lindsey and Mal who had been roomed together for only god knows what reason, long after Rose had started yawning and dozing and protesting sleep, long after Emily had suggested drawing on her face with marker, and long after Lindsey and Mal had managed to convince her not to on the basis that they didn’t have any Sharpies in the room. All Emily had wanted was a nap, an hour max, to try and catch up on her sleep before the game later that night. Sleep refuses to come, and Abby is gone, and once it’s been nearly half an hour since the last knock and no noise has come from the other side of the wall, Emily is struck with an undeniable need to satisfy her curiosity. 

Because she’s absolutely dying over here - absolutely on the brink of death, all thanks to a bound stack of paper in her bag in the corner that might as well have neon arrows surrounding, blinking bright and white and drawing her attention no matter how much effort she puts towards sleeping. 

She’s going to regret it, she knows. So she does everything she can to stop it. 

Emily gets up and brushes her teeth. She brushes her hair. She looks at Abby’s bag of makeup sitting next to the sink and seriously considers messing around with the contents before deciding that draining one of the water bottles on the dresser is a better use of her time. She turns on the tv, turns the volume up loud, and sits down to try and pay attention despite the fact that her right leg won’t stop bouncing and she can’t focus to save her life. 

She texts Lindsey, who doesn’t answer. She ignores another text from Kelley. She checks Twitter and Instagram and double taps on Abby’s selfie with Sam and Casey and Kristen. That might seal the deal, honestly - the knowledge that Abby is out and about and not coming back yet. She still scrolls through her feed a bit but she isn’t seeing anything, not really, and then she clicks over to the explore page and it’s just a small thumbnail but it’s enough to pique her curiosity enough that she realizes that she can’t keep doing this anymore. 

The phone gets thrown to the other side of the bed and the magazine gets pulled out of the bag. Emily hates how she handles it, looking down at the cover and letting her eyes trace over every bit of it, hands planted in front of her for balance as she sits cross-legged on the mattress and tries to get it together. She does her best to go slow, turning every page one by one and telling herself that this is fine, that this is normal, she’s just reading a sports magazine and it doesn’t have to be weird or creepy. 

But Kelley looks so good, and Emily knows that she’s been making the right decisions up until now, because there’s no guarantee she wouldn’t have made a fool out of herself one way or another if she’d first looked at these in public. Sure, she’d gotten glimpses, had seen yesterday’s group texts, has steadfastly stayed away from the group chat which she knows with near certainty has been blowing up with these pictures and commentary nearly all day. But she hasn’t looked, not really, because she knew she’d have a reaction - whether it be drooling like an idiot or making dumb jokes that really showcased her dumbassery, or anything in between - that she would have regretted having. 

She goes slow. She turns every page with a kind of reverence and examines every page like she’s looking for hidden clues (hopefully a clue that tells her that it’s okay to feel like this, that it’s okay to feel hot and bothered and flushed at the sight of one of her closest friends posing in a way that’s not at all meant to be sexual but is still so incredibly magnetic). She reads the entire issue front to back and tries to ignore the way she’s feeling, tries to ignore the funny feeling around her navel, tries to ignore the urges she’s having, but then she’s flipping through like a woman crazed and taking it all in for real, the way she’d been too cowardly to the first time around, and she’s flipping around until she’s on her stomach and the spread is laid out before her on the bed, left elbows propping her up so she can see while her right hand wedges between her legs and the sudden pressure right where she wants it is almost too, too much, and - 

And there’s a noise, and she doesn’t know what it is, but she springs into action with a speed she didn’t know she could possess when not on the field. 

Emily shoves the magazine under the pillows, and sprints to the bathroom, locking it behind her just as she hears the door open up. She turns on the sink and runs the cold water, looking at her reflection, and doesn’t know how to feel about what she sees. Her hair is a mess and her entire face looks red, the hue spreading down her neck and over her chest until it disappears under the neckline of her t-shirt. It’s shocking and she feels embarrassed, embarrassed at what she was about to do and with the magnitude of what she’s been feeling, and how unavoidable it’s all become. 

“Son?” Abby calls out. “You in there?”

“Yeah,” Emily calls back, hoping that the sound of the water covers up the unsteadiness in her voice. “I’m here.”

“Okay, I’m back,” Abby says, voice getting clearer, and Emily can tell that she’s standing right on the other side of the bathroom door. “Take your time, I just want to refresh before we head out before the game.”

“Okay,” Emily calls out, and splashes her face with cold water. 

When she looks back up at herself, she might look a lot less affected, and her heart rate might have gone back to normal but she’s still feeling the same, and she isn’t sure what to do about it. 

Abby provides enough of a distraction until they have to head down for a pre-game team dinner. Emily doesn’t think to seek out anyone else right away, trusting Abby to jabber on about benign nonsense and keep from asking her why she’s being so quiet. They end up at a table with Becky and Crystal and JJ, and Emily is only half-tuned in when she feels someone lightly tapping her on the shoulder. 

It’s Kelley. Of course it’s Kelley. Emily could tell it was her from a mile away, even when she’s being much gentler than normal. 

When Emily turns around to look at her, she isn’t prepared for how small Kelley looks. She looks uncertain, mouth twisted into something decidedly not happy, and Emily feels terrible. Even though she knows that she’s been entirely wrapped up in her own conflict, that surely Kelley wasn’t going to be unaffected by the way Emily has been ignoring her, that she’d be forced to face her eventually, she still isn’t prepared for this. Her mind is still trying to get over what she’d nearly done in the room not long before this, to the extent that she isn’t at all ready to have any kind of conversation with Kelley. 

“Can I talk to you?” Kelley asks, and her lips are pressed into a thin line that Emily tends to associate with nothing good at all. 

“I’m eating,” Emily says, fork hovering over her sweet potatoes. She doesn’t try to justify the two words, doesn’t try to elaborate, because she doesn’t know how to make this better for the both of them simultaneously. 

“I know,” Kelley says, and the difference between the steely expression Emily is used to and the one that she’s faced with now is the lack of hardness in Kelley’s eyes. “Can I talk to you?”

“Later?” Emily suggests, and she’s not sure if she’s imagining it, but she feels like everyone must be looking at the two of them. 

Kelley’s resolve doesn’t slip, but she does look away for a moment before refocusing her eyes on Emily, who refuses to meet her this time around. 

“Did I do something?” Kelley asks, and there’s no edge to it like Emily would expect from her. 

Emily swallows even though her mouth is empty. 

“No,” she says. “Can I just - can we talk later? Not now.”

The reality of it is that her heart is pounding and she feels like she’s going to be sick, because the guilt in the pit of her stomach has grown exponentially in size and she doesn’t know what to do about it.. She doesn’t know how to begin to right this, doesn’t know how to go back to the root of this issue and fix all the ways in which it’s spread and turned into something ugly and invasive. Emily doesn’t know what to do, but she does know that she’s not about to have this conversation in the middle of a team dinner. 

“Yeah,” Kelley says, and the complete and utter resignation on her face make Emily almost want to change her mind, to get up and put her hands on Kelley’s shoulders and make sure that she knows that none of this is her fault and it’s just entirely Emily’s. It’s all Emily being a massive idiot who can’t get herself under control, who can’t manage her emotions and her desires and shuts down and runs when she doesn’t know what the best solution is. But she doesn’t do that, because she wouldn’t be herself if she did, and she just sits there and tries to decide if it would be unforgivably rude of her to turn back around to her plate. 

The chicken is probably getting cold. 

Thankfully, she’s saved the necessity of making a decision by Kelley walking away - head held high, but a slump to her shoulders that Emily wonders if anyone else can see. 

*

Emily doesn’t play well. 

To be fair, none of them play well. It’s just a friendly and playoffs are coming up so not everyone is trying very hard, and the only good thing about it is the goal Lindsey scores. Emily spends most of the time post-match all over her, messing with her ponytail and getting shoved aside even though she can tell through Lindsey’s smile that she’s really, really pleased, and can almost definitely tell that Emily is really, really proud. It’s nice to have something else to focus on, something to take her mind off the looming conversation with Kelley that she’s got to admit is unavoidable. Kelley is tenacious, to say the least, and unless she’s undergone a major personality transplant in the last few days (entirely possible, honestly, considering how she’d been at dinner), there’s no way Emily is getting out of this conversation. 

As proud as she is of Lindsey for scoring - Lindsey tries to brush it off, saying it’s only a friendly, but Emily won’t hear a word of it - she’s rather disappointed that she can’t steal her aside to ask for her opinion on what to do with Kelley. She’ll look like a jerk if she does, if she makes this occasion about her, if she takes away from Lindsey’s momentary lack of underlying moodiness, and that’s what ends up being her downfall. Emily thinks that if she could just be a little more selfish, if she could just be less of an excellent friend to Lindsey, then maybe she wouldn’t end up alone near the showers (she’s trying to avoid the locker room as much as possible, since it’s still overflowing with the pictures from the previous day, and Rose had offered Emily her face wash, just asking her to give it back when she was done, but not without a jab at the pimple brewing on her chin), where Kelley finds her as she’s patting her face dry. 

“You are avoiding me, then,” Kelley says, and Emily can’t tell how she’s feeling after yet another game on the bench, so she treads carefully and doesn’t speak at all, figuring that letting Kelley lead this might be in her best interest. 

“It’s later,” Kelley says. “Can we talk yet?”

“Oh, yeah,” Emily says, clutching Rose’s travel-sized face wash in one hand, small towel in the other. “You want to talk here?”

“Well, unless you’re going to send me away again,” Kelley says, and Emily doesn’t get it, but she desperately wishes that she did. 

“I...won’t,” Emily says, feeling like a coward. 

“Right,” Kelley says. “Okay. Sure.”

“What did you want to talk about?” Emily asks, and all Kelley’s doing is standing there in her shorts and jacket, socks pulled down around her ankles without any shoes, but Emily still wants her. She wants her so badly and she doesn’t know how to deal with that, because it’s nothing she can ever actually have and it’s really going to kill her before long. 

Kelley hesitates, and it’s concerning. She usually never has trouble saying what she wants to say. 

“Hey,” Emily says suddenly, because she’d been unsure of whether she’d be dealing with a hard and blazing Kelley or not, but she hadn’t expected a Kelley who is apprehensive and almost timid. The guilt is all-consuming at this point, but something within Emily wins out and makes her reach out. 

Metaphorically, of course. Not literally. For Emily to literally reach out for Kelley at this point would require her mind being wiped clean of everything she’s been thinking and everything she’s done, and that’s clearly not happening any time soon. 

“Are you okay?” Emily asks. “I didn’t think a little time apart would bother you this much - we just spent the weekend together, you know?”

“Yeah,” Kelley says, and she’s quiet still but with a slightly stronger look in her eye. “Yeah I just - remember when I asked you to go to the shoot with me?”

Emily nods trepidatiously. She hadn't anticipated that ever being brought up, what with how nonchalant it had been at the time 

“Why didn’t you want to?”

It’s not hard to give an honest answer, and for that Emily is temporarily relieved. 

“I had a flight to catch,” she says, a bit confused as to why Kelley is asking. “And I mean, were you serious?”

“Of course I was serious,” Kelley says as if the mere notion that she hadn’t been is ludicrous. “Why else would I have asked?”

“I don’t know,” Emily says. “Why would you?”

Kelley changes tack. 

“I didn’t think you’d hate it,” she says, and Emily hates that Kelley seems hurt. She hadn’t seen it before, but now it’s plain as day, with the way she’s holding herself differently than she ever has. “Is it - is it the religious thing? Do you have a problem with nudity? Or do I just offend you in general?”

Emily is speechless, and not in a good way. She’s gaping like a fish and Kelley keeps talking and Emily wishes she had something smart to say, but she doesn’t. 

“I’m sorry for badgering you about it,” Kelley keeps going on. “I won’t ask you about it again, and I’ll get Alex to stop slipping copies under everyone’s door - ”

“She’s been doing that?” Emily says in wonderment, laughing despite the situation. 

Kelley looks at her, one corner of her mouth turned up ever so slightly. 

“Did she really not make it to your room?” Kelley says, and now it’s like she’s half smiling, and Emily is laughing, and then Kelley is too, and it’s like the ice is broken. 

“I’m not offended,” Emily tells Kelley, who is already looking multitudes better than she did when she first walked in. “I promise. I just didn’t know what you needed to hear from me. I don’t have a problem with it, I promise.”

“I’m sorry for forcing it on you,” Kelley says, looking as sheepish as she’s capable of. “I asked Alex what I was doing wrong, and she told me to stop forcing it on you.”

“Coming from the person who’s turned it into confetti, that’s a bit shocking,” Emily says dryly. 

“I know,” Kelley says with a grin. “So will you please stop ignoring me? Do you have any idea how humiliating it is to be knocking on a door while a family of six walks past and looks at me like I’ve got three heads?”

“They were probably imagining you without your clothes,” Emily says without thinking. “Probably saw the shoot and recognized you.”

Kelley’s eyes narrow goodnaturedly, and she opens her mouth to say something that Emily is very much eager to hear, but then - 

“Are you two done in here?” Rose asks obnoxiously, popping her head around the corner and pointing at Emily. “I kind of want that back some time today, you know.”

“Sorry,” Emily says, looking at the bottle still in her hand, and then looking back up at Rose. “I didn’t forget, I wasn’t planning on stealing it.”

“Right,” Rose says suspiciously. “Anyway. We’re about ready to get on the bus, so.”

“We’ll be there,” Emily tells her, and she throws the face wash, and Rose manages to catch it in her hands. 

“You’re still just as bad at throwing as you were at the game,” Rose says, and Emily is really, truly, honestly going to kill her. 

This time when she starts towards her, Emily is incredibly pleased to see that Rose screeches and runs away, yelling for Sam to protect her. 

All order feels restored to the universe. 

*

Everything feels better when Kelley is freshly showered and making her way through their adjoining doors. Emily doesn’t know what happened to make it all feel okay again, and even though she doesn’t exactly feel normal again, she feels like achieving normality again isn’t as far out of reach as it had seemed earlier. During her own shower, she’d felt the shame and guilt washing away to leave behind a very stripped down version of the facts. And really, being attracted to Kelley isn’t the worst thing Emily could be left with. Really, she’s incredibly lucky that Kelley hasn’t given her a rougher time about her behavior over the last couple of days. 

So yeah, maybe Emily’s got a bit of a crush. And maybe Kelley’s too good looking for her own good, and Emily is going to have to deal with that for the foreseeable future, but the truth is that she values their friendship too much to let this ruin it. She folds herself up in bed, neck bowed over her phone as she finally opens the group text and carelessly scrolls though to make sure that she hasn’t missed anything earth-shattering. The door to Kelley’s room has been left open and Emily is just waiting for her to come over so they can figure out what to do with what little is left of their night, and she’s picking at her chapped lips with her free hand when something stops her in her tracks. 

It’s Rose. Who else would it be, really? Who else would be so bold as to say such a thing, in the group chat especially? Maybe Emily’s heart wouldn’t be racing along if it had been private, if Lindsey and Mal hadn’t presumably read it as well (well okay, it’s no more revealing for Lindsey than anything Emily has told her over the last month or so), but as it is, she’s going to actually kill Rose tonight if it’s the last thing she does, because there’s absolutely no reason for her to suggest that the reason Emily wasn’t replying was because she was too busy getting up close and personal with the real life version of the body issue. 

No reason at all, unless she has a death wish and a will written out. 

But before she can get up and stomp down the hall in search of her traitorous supposed friend, Kelley is coming in and Emily is looking up from her phone, locking it and throwing it down in her lap. It’s almost like  déjà vu, sitting there with her legs crossed and Kelley in front of her, except this real life version is smiling softly and wearing a thin, oversized t-shirt over some pajama shorts. 

“Hey,” Kelley says, closing one of the doors she just walked through. “What’s up?”

“Nothing,” Emily says, and a couple of deep breaths later, she’s decided that killing Rose can wait until the morning. Kelleys standing at the foot of the bed, mattress pressing into her thighs, and Emily can’t decide whether she’s glad that Abby is gone or not. “If I kill Rose, will you come bail me out of jail?”

“Depends,” Kelley says amusedly, tapping her fingers against the hotel comforter. “How are you killing her?”

“Haven’t decided yet,” Emily says. “Want to help me dream up how I’m going to do it?”

“Sure,” Kelley says complacently, going around to the other side of the bed. “Can I ask what she’s done? I’m assuming she deserves this, of course.”

“Totally,” Emily says, picking her phone back up. In her periphery she’s aware of Kelley adjusting the pillows, fluffing and propping them up before she’s ready to sit down, and then it hits her. 

“No, don’t,” Emily says quickly, and she’s throwing her phone again and trying to stop Kelley, but it’s useless and she knows she looks deranged, but Kelley is standing there with ESPN magazine pinched between her thumb and forefinger, shooting Emily a very curious look. 

“So you have seen it,” Kelley says, sounding far too interested. “Don’t think I noticed you refusing to look the other day, by the way.”

“It was yesterday, not the other day,” Emily says, and she can feel herself flushing, and it’s all starting again as Kelley rolls her shoulders back and opens the issue like she’s a kindergarten teacher, ready to read a book to the class. 

“A technicality,” Kelley says dismissively. She licks her thumb and index finger before turning the thin pages, rifling through until she finds what she’s looking for. “So, what’s the big deal then? You couldn’t look in the locker room, but you could look at it in here?”

Emily is, once again, speechless. A rare state of being for her, really, but Kelley seems to pull it out of her far too easily. 

“Or were you looking at someone else?” Kelley guesses, turning more pages. “Who was it? Oh, was it the football players? I mean, gross, but I’ll try not to hold it against you. Might make fun of you for a little while, but you’d deserve it.”

Emily reaches over and pulls the magazine out of Kelley’s hands and she knows her face is either bright red or a shade very close to it, but this time there’s nowhere to run or hide, no Lindsey to protect her, and she just has to deal with it. 

“You know I would never,” Emily says, and her voice goes too high and cracks, and Kelley tilts her head, bringing up a knee to rest on the side of the bed. 

“You’re allowed to look, you know,” Kelley says, and there’s an undercurrent of humor to it that makes Emily really wish Lindsey were here to rescue her. “Like, do you think I did this so that people could not look at it?”

Emily licks her lips. She’s got no idea what to say and just wants to change the subject, but Kelley is still talking. 

“Okay, okay,” Kelley says, and for a moment, Emily thinks that maybe she’ll emerge from this unscathed. “Alex told me to stop harassing you about it, and I will, but can I just say one thing first?”

Emily nods. 

“Well, it’s more of a question,” Kelley quips, and Emily nods again. “Which shot is your favorite?”

Emily’s mouth does that thing again where it pools with saliva and she can’t breathe, can’t think, because of everything she thought Kelley would say, she thought it would be something she can answer. But Emily can’t answer this; she can’t pick a favorite, not when she’s fully obsessed with each and every single shot of Kelley that this shoot has generated, not when she’s briefly entertained the thought of what it would have been like to be there with Kelley throughout it all, not when she’s been trying so damn hard to remain civilized about all of this. 

She doesn’t have an answer, so she swallows and does what she does when she doesn’t know the answer to a question, and asks one of her own. 

“Why did you ask me to go with you?”

She doesn’t expect Kelley’s answer to come as readily as it does. 

“Because I wanted to do this with you.”

It seems so simple but it’s not, not at all, and Kelley must see something on Emily’s face that gives away the chaos she’s feeling inside, because she climbs onto the bed, over to Emily’s side, and doesn’t stop until she too is sitting cross-legged and facing her head-on, their knees barely an inch apart. Emily leans back against her pillows in an attempt to put some space between them, but Kelley doesn’t seem to like that and just leans in closer. 

“Listen,” Kelley says, and she puts a hand on Emily’s knee, and it takes Emily a whole lot of willpower not to smack it away. Or worse, cover it with one of her own. “I wish you’d been there. It was so cool and beautiful outside, and everyone was so chill.”

Emily attempts to best verbalize the one thought that she can latch onto. 

“You joked about asking Christen for pointers,” she says. “Did you?”

“Kind of,” Kelley says, posture relaxing as she returns her own hand to her own knee. “When they asked me to do it. She said a lot of stuff about how to feel comfortable while doing it.”

“You know she took Tobin with her, right?” Emily blurts out. 

“Yeah,” Kelley says, and the way she refuses to break eye contact is something that Emily would normally shy away from, but this feels kind of important. “Yeah, I know.”

Emily sucks in a breath, and her grip tightens on the magazine that she’s rolled up in her hands, and she sits upright to get closer to Kelley. 

“Why did you ask me to go with you?” Emily asks, and she’d like to be able to say that her voice is calm and level, but instead it’s a mess and traveling all over the place, but it doesn’t matter because Kelley isn’t blinking as she answers confidently. 

Except it’s not so much of an answer as it is lips pressed to hers, but Emily isn’t complaining at all. 

There’s force behind it, something that catches Emily by surprise - as if she wouldn’t have been regardless, honestly - and she presses back, hands clenching with the need for something to do, and she’s got no idea how they both wound up here, doing this, but it feels so good. It’s unrefined because their lips are chapped and the whole thing is dry and it’s nothing magical, but it’s everything Emily would never dare to hope for and everything she’s been dreaming of. She slowly, slowly as to not disrupt the tenuous moment, places the magazine to the side, and she wants to reach up and take Kelley in her hands because she’s not entirely sure that this is real and serious and she wants to get a firm hold on it before it disappears, but then Kelley pulls back. It makes Emily’s heart plummet from her throat down to her stomach, and she’s desperate to maintain this delicate space, but then Kelley makes a soft humming noise and Emily realizes that maybe she doesn’t have to. 

Maybe this isn’t going to disappear. 

“Come on,” Kelley says, and it’s sweetly chiding. “Did you really think I would have asked you for any other reason?”

“Kell,” Emily says, and it’s still unsteady but she at least feels more grounded than she did a minute ago. “If you wanted me to see you naked, all you had to do was say so.”

Kelley lets out a laugh and Emily doesn’t know if she’s allowed to, but she kisses her anyway and this time it feels better, it feels real, like she’s prepared for it. She kisses Kelley deeply and it feels like she’s finally got an outlet for everything she’s been struggling with, and with Kelley wrapping her arms around her neck and leaning into her, rising up on her knees to get a better angle, well - 

Let Emily just say that this feels like the beginning of what she’s been wanting with Kelley for the last month. She reaches for Kelley’s hips and even though she’d spent entirely too long looking at those dumb pictures in that dumb magazine, she’s still eager to get her eyes on every bit of Kelley, even the bits that she feels could already be etched into her brain forever. Kelley doesn’t waste any time straddling her and opening up the kiss, just as persistent as Emily knows her to be, and Emily doesn’t know why she let this whole thing stress her out so much. 

It’s so exciting and exhilarating and Emily wants this so much, so much that she could cry out in relief. Instead she just kisses Kelley like it’s what she was supposed to do all along, like it feels totally right and natural - which honestly, it kind of does. Kelley is digging her fingers into the back of Emily’s neck, where it’s still slightly damp thanks to her drying hair, and when she pauses for a second to breathe, Emily just chases her lips like it’s the only thing that matters. She doesn’t know how they do it, how she manages to keep kissing or how Kelley manages to wordlessly reassure her that this is exactly what she wants to be doing in this moment, but it’s happening and it’s all because of fucking ESPN. 

The kiss tapers off and Kelley sits back on her heels and Emily feels strangely delighted with how she looks, her mouth kiss-swollen and her wet hair streaking down her cotton short. It’s hard to catch her breath, but Kelley looks to be having the same problem so she doesn’t bother with feeling embarrassed about it. 

“Is this why you’ve been so weird?” Kelley asks, pushing her hair off her shoulders. “Is this why you wouldn’t tell me what you thought about it?”

“I’ll tell you what I thought about it,” Emily tells her, and she kisses Kelley again, this time with a hand cradling her face and Kelley goes without protest, melting under Emily’s hands. They kiss like that for a while, wordlessly deciding that they’ll talk about all of this another time, and just as Emily is rucking up the hem of Kelley’s shirt and trying to pull her back into her lap, there’s a noise. 

Emily supposes she deserves this, after managing to avoid being caught earlier. It only makes sense that she wouldn’t hear Abby fumbling for her room key, and that she wouldn’t pull away from the kiss until the door was already open and Abby was already inside. It’s funny, she supposes, the way that the three of them look at each other for a long moment. 

“Well,” Abby says, coughing into her hand. “Okay, wow.”

Kelley moves her hips back until she’s no longer touching Emily, and Emily kind of wishes she wouldn’t, but she’s also aware that she shouldn’t give Abby any more of a show than she’s already gotten. 

“Sorry,” Emily says, and she would normally be embarrassed by something like this, but it’s hard to feel anything except for how ridiculously happy she is with this sudden turn of events. “Um, how are you?”

“Good,” Abby says, very clearly doing a very poor job of hiding a grin. “Wow. If I’d known that that’s what doing the body issue would get me, maybe I wouldn’t have settled for the swimsuits.”

Kelley bursts out into laughter, and it’s not long before Emily is doing the same. Abby just moves about the room, chuckling as she does, and holds up a stack of clothes while pointing to the bathroom. 

“I’m going to get ready for bed,” she says. “You two - well, do what you want to do.”

She’s gone then, and Emily feels like her entire body is on fire, but Kelley is looking at her in a way that makes her feel a whole lot less alone on that front. 

“So,” Kelley says, eyebrows raised. “You never answered my question.”

“Which one?” Emily asks. 

Kelley reaches over for the magazine, placing it neatly in Emily’s lap. 

“Which shot was your favorite,” she explains. “Or, if you’d rather, you can tell me why you were hiding this under your pillow.”

“Oh, hell no,” Emily says before thinking, shaking her head violently. “Absolutely not.”

“Now you’ve got to,” Kelley says, and she looks positively gleeful, and it’s such a welcome change from the last few days that Emily is powerless to resist. “Tell me right now.”

Emily sighs, shoulders slumping but smiling as she picks up the magazine. 

“I hate that you’ve done this, just so you know,” she warns Kelley. 

“No you don’t,” Kelley says cheekily. “Unless, if you’d rather not talk, we can always go back to what we were doing before. I kind of liked that.”

Emily casts a glance at the bathroom, weighing her odds and then deciding that she really doesn’t care anymore. 

“Yeah, I’d rather not talk more right now,” she says, because really, in the grand scheme of things, if she’s capable of handling the emotional turmoil she was experiencing before this, then she can handle Abby. “We can save that for another time.”

“Excellent,” Kelley says, and there are restless hands and frantic mouths and Emily really has no idea how it’s all happened or what they’re going to do with it, but she thinks she might be okay with it all for right now. 

**Author's Note:**

> this was meant to be a tiny little one-shot that quickly morphed into something huge, so i embraced the word count and just went for it. hopefully it worked out well. let me know what you think either here or at softanticipation.tumblr.com !


End file.
